New reports on Terri Schiavo at The North Country Gazette
www.northcountrygazette.org
THE NEW SLAUGHTER HOUSE RULES
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/042605hen.html
SCHIAVO AUTOPSY WILL NOT CONFIRM DIAGNOSIS
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/042605autopsy.html
Diane Coleman, President of Not-Dead-Yet, spoke before the Federal Oversight Committee Hearing on incapacitated persons on April 19, 2005.
Ms. Coleman offered suggestions on what the lawmakers can do to help stop the movement to euthanize people who are vulnerable and cannot speak for themselves.
http://www.notdeadyet.org/docs/ColemanCongTestmy041905.html
EXCERPTS
It wasn't long before the problem of non-voluntary and involuntary withdrawal of food and water also moved onto Not Dead Yet's radar screen. Before Terri Schiavo, there was Robert Wendland in California. Both his wife and mother agreed that Mr. Wendland was not in a persistent vegetative state, and that he had not left clear and convincing evidence of his wishes. Nevertheless, his wife argued that she should be able to remove his tube feeding anyway, and Dr. Ron Cranford was on the scene to support her. A state statute, based on a national model health care decisions code, gave her the right to starve and dehydrate him, and forty-three bioethicists filed a friend of the court brief in agreement. Ten disability rights organizations filed against the general presumption that no one would want to live with his disabilities, being used to justify lowering constitutional protections of his life. Ultimately, the California Supreme Court agreed with us that his life could not be taken without clear and convincing evidence of his wishes.
By the time the Schiavo case reached major national attention in 2003, twenty-six national disability organizations had taken a position that Terri Schiavo should receive food and water, due to the highly conflicting evidence of her wishes and the fact that she had not chosen her own guardian. Attached to my written testimony is a three page statement issued by twenty-three such groups in October 2003, and a more recent article co-authored by Steve Eidelman, head of the Arc of the United States, and Stephen Drake, research analyst for Not Dead Yet. We were deeply disturbed to see court after court uphold questionable lower court rulings. This time, 55 bioethicists supported the removal of food and water. We were also disturbed that the court allowed most of Terri Schiavo's rehabilitation funds to be spent on her husband's lawyers, that she was denied a properly fitted wheelchair, a swallowing test, swallowing therapy, the potential for oral feeding, speech therapy, and the freedom to leave the hospice with her parents, even temporarily. And we were concerned that adult protective services did not intervene, and the state protection and advocacy agency tried but proved powerless. It would appear that the prevalent prejudice that no one would want to live like Terri Schiavo translated into her guardian's unfettered right to treat her at best as a prisoner, at worst as though she was already dead.
Nevertheless, the perspectives of such prominent national groups as The Arc of the United States (formerly the Association for retarded Citizens), the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, the National Council on Independent Living, and many others were consistently ignored by most of the press, as well as the courts.
Unfortunately, the anecdotal evidence suggests that Terri Schiavo's case may be the tip of a very large and almost fully submerged iceberg. I've been a health care advocate for a couple decades, often joining street protests against government health cuts. One mission of the end-of-life care movement is a good one, to educate health care providers about how to provide good palliative care, but another mission is to shape public policy on health care. It appears that a certain line of thought in bioethics has pretty much taken over the policy-making work. This line of thought involves a lifeboat approach, deciding who gets thrown out.
When we analyze, why have the pro-life and religious advocates received such disproportionate attention, we are forced to conclude that disability rights advocates don't fit a script that everyone else seems determined to follow. For the last three decades, certain bioethicists have told the press and the public that euthanasia is about compassionate progressives versus the religious right. Never mind that these bioethicists are actually talking about the legal parameters for statutory guardians and health care providers to medically end the lives of people with disabilities on a discriminatory, non-voluntary or involuntary basis. Never mind that it takes more documentation to dispose of our property than to dispose of our lives. Concerned disability groups don't fit the script and so we have been marginalized or ignored entirely.
To conclude, regardless of our abilities or disabilities, none of us should feel that we have to die to have dignity, that we have to die to be relieved of pain, or that we should die to stop burdening our families or society. Cognitive abilities must not be allowed to determine personhood under the laws of the United States. Reject the script you have been given by the right to die and the right to life movements. Instead, listen to the disability movement. We are your advance guard, in anticipation of the aging of our society, with decades of experience in living with disability. We want to help build a society that respects and welcomes everyone.
New Slaughter House Rules - Thanks for posting that article! Very good.
I have been wondering why someone doesn't look up members of the original jury - who sat there and believed Michael Schiavo about how he loved Terri and would do everything in his power to take care of her and get rehab for her. He lied to each and every one of them and ended up using the money awarded to him to pay for lawyers to kill her.
Would it be possible to interview some of those jurors to find out how they feel about what happened to Terri? Just wondering.